Just a Chat
by Canadino
Summary: Wensleydale and Brian have a chat with Famine and Pollution respectedly about relaying one's fancy about another...or in other words, how to tell another bloke you like him. Famine/Pollution, Brian/Wensleydale


**Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the story idea and only some of the witty remarks. I own so little; so please don't steal.**

Background music: -

[=]

Just a Chat

Raven Sable organizes the files of paperwork on his desk, tries every single one of his pens for ink, and _even_ plans his afternoon tea (which will consist of half a cup of Chamomile and a third of a crumpet to ensure room for a minute supper) – in short, everything that should advise any unwanted visitor that _he_ is not _needed_ and should_ leave_. But, in the boy's defense Sable will suppose, he took the time to seek him out – missing his _own_ afternoon tea in the process, making him squirm slightly from the growling stomach making its debut in the office – so he should be a gracious host and entertain the boy's thoughts.

"If your conversation does not involve any business-related topics, or you wish to discuss some of my brands in relation to your sated stomach, know that it is lacking…"

"Ah, no, sir," Wensleydale says, subconsciously bringing his hand up to his face to adjust his glasses, which are sliding off his nose in a way that would suggest he was growing skinnier just by existing in the room[1]. "Ah…something else entirely…"

Black raises his eyebrows. "Something else entirely?" He knows a logical question to follow might entail something about how a boy who had defeated him a time earlier has rediscovered his new location in the vast nation of England, and now such a boy who cannot legally drive yet has made his way to this very office. But Black knows better than to question Adam Young's Bikers. They are not of his world.

Wensleydale fidgets more in the cold, hard seat in Black's room. Sable does not keep comfortable, cushioned chairs for his callers. He does not at least grant them that wish. "I was wondering…this is probably not one of my best ideas…but I didn't know who to go to…but…" He looks up at the shrewd appearance of a businessman over the black rims of his glasses.

"You figured since we had encountered each other earlier in our lifetimes, we had some sort of connection," Sable finishes, tasting this opinion and finding it not to his liking. It's a rather human taste. Wensley nods, dipping his head so the afternoon sun reflects off his lens. "Go on."

"Just…being an educated sort of bloke who likes to do things right…how does one go about telling another he is the first bloke's fancy, that while growing up, fights were alright because they allowed them to grow closer?"

Sable closes his eyes and frowns. Someday, he promises, he will understand the babble of humans. "Excuse me?"

"How does one relay one's fancy about another to that individual?"

"Straighter, please."

"How do I tell someone I like them?"

Black rubs his temples. He deals with the passion and longing with one organ only: the stomach. Famine does not love anything but more famine, and perhaps failed crops and drought. Oh, how he is infatuated with drought. Though he supposes he can also love his fellow riders, though he hasn't seen any of them since the avoided day of reckoning. War moved too fast to listen to her stomach and she barely felt hunger as she was constantly being satisfied. Death did not have a stomach.

Wensleydale's stomach growled again.

[=]

"Dark hair," Pollution murmured wistfully, reaching a pale hand out to touch Brian's dirty dark locks. "You can charm anyone with dark hair."

Brian, if asked, would not be able to tell you why he turned the direction he did on his skateboard after school. Instead of taking a right, which would have taken him home, he has taken a left and entered a part of time inhabited only by a rusty smokestack and an abandoned building that reeks of coal. He cannot tell you why he turned down the hallways he did until he reached an employee room, with a single, shoddy bed in the middle. [2] Under the bed sheets, which are caked with soot and what he hopes is just oil, a lone white figure has been sleeping until he entered. But Pollution is everywhere and he knows what Brian seeks.

"You can look mysterious and charming but personable…makes you crave more of what you can know about that person." White yawns, stretching out; the sheets slither off his shoulders like oil. In fact, the bed itself shimmers as if White secretes a shiny substance as he lingers. Brian feels something dirty where White touched him and realizes there are carbon traces in his hair, along with whatever there was before.

White sits up on the bed, smiling banally as if Brian did not just wake him from a deep sleep. As they speak, old coal dust is settling on the grass outside and somewhere miles away, a woman haphazardly pours detergent down the drain to the find the marbles her son accidentally dropped into the bottle. Brian would feel bad about walking into what seems to be White's temporary bedroom, with White lounging in bed with sleepy eyes, but he's known what White can do. He needs a wake-up call sooner or later. "What do you want? Are the sunsets still an acidy orange?"

"And every color in between," Brian says, in a level voice that he does not recognize. [3]

"I'll try and make it look prettier next time for you and your significant other," White decides. "You haven't seen my best yet, and they say your surroundings can be a very good mood setter."

"No acid rain, though."

"No promises," Pollution shrugs, dropping his head back on the pillow, his white blonde hair scattering across the mattress.

[=]

"You have to know what the other person is looking for," Black says.

"I know what B…he's looking for, but I don't know if there's anything about me that he likes."

Why is this boy asking him for? Sable has no knowledge about these sort of intricate details. Wensley seems to sense this. "What about you, then?" the bespeckled boy asks. "What sort of things do you look for in someone…or thing…else?"

"I primarily operate alone," Black says, a bit offended. He does not need someone else to help him do his job. "But as you asked…I suppose there _was_ someone I had relations with before the _incident_."

Wensleydale acknowledges this. Yes, _that_ incident. "It was intangible," Sable muses. "Something distracting. Having to work hard for attention, when the other person has so many things around them to do. So many things to corrupt. But the ideal to strive for is to draw attention to yourself without looking desperate. Pretend you have starving children to look after but you wouldn't mind coating fish off the coast with tar either."

Wensley makes a face at the analogy, but doesn't challenge it. "It's about the challenge," Sable concludes. "You can't make it that easy."

[=]

"Distance is a factor of course," White concedes, tangling himself up with the sheets. To Brian, it looks like White has begun to have an oozing consistency with the rest of the bed. "But when you can be everywhere at once, it doesn't matter. Sometimes you see snatches, sometimes you don't. But you don't want it to appear like you're looking."

"Right," Brain agrees; he thinks about school, but not because he actually pays attention in school. More like, he pays attention to Wensleydale, who pays attention in school. Because even though Adam is popular, Pepper beats all the boys in basketball and then some, and Brian always finds himself coated in mud even though he no longer plays in the woods in the afternoons, Wensley has not abandoned them for a study group. Yet. He hopes not, at least. But it's not like he really notices[4].

"It's best if you make it so both your goals are realized," Pollution continues, staring up at the ceiling, at the plastic that will never rot in landfills. "Like if you could soak into the ground and make it so nothing grew there and farmers who depended on it when hungry…something like that."

"Something like that," Brian echoes, but he's not actually listening that much.

[=]

"You also must keep it discreet," Sable adds. "Even if your colleagues may not object, you never want to display your personal business." It's not like Red has her eyes out on any of them, but the fact that she cannot make them love her when she can make _anyone_ love her is enough to make her unleash her wrath on them. And anyway, she would just point and laugh. War finds the strangest things amusing. Death, who has never felt such kinds of emotion, would not understand; it would be a waste of energy to say anything.

"It makes you look foolish," Wensleydale supplies, and they both nod. If there is something similar about them, it is the straightforward way they get things done. You want something done, you do it according to plan, results are accomplished. Sable knows what he wants. Wensleydale does too. He has spent the past fifteen years of his life mapping out the rest of the years he has left. They take a calculated step at a time.

"Not to say not to do anything about it," Sable backtracks. His mouth is itchy from not eating and it's making his lips loose. "You don't want them to remain in the dark about it, of course."

"Yes."

"But don't be flashy about it. People will want to do something then." Black curls his lips at the thought of the commercials of his beloved followers. They are pitiful pictures made for the fortunate to donate so the less fortunate can pay off Sable. Sable does not need to be paid off by human money. He is happy with the status quo, unless it changes in his favor.

Wensleydale agrees again, but mostly because Adam came up to him once after class and said, "You know, old chap, I could _make_ Brian spend more time with you if you'd like," but it wasn't okay if it was fake; it was the principle behind it that really counted. His stomach rumbled again. If he didn't know better, the room was actually making him think of food. [5] That was never a good idea if you didn't have any on you at the time.

[=]

"Touching is good too," White says, his hands moving in the air like the ripples of something horrid. "The feel of contact is better than anything burning or slippery or corrosive."

Brian finds truth in this as well. When he brushes the back of his hand against Wensley's in the hallway, it feels quite nice. Though he would never tell anyone, because it would eventually get back to Pepper, who would probably punch him for being such a sissy. He knows this because the time he borrowed Pepper's catcher's mitt and accidentally tore a hole in it and tried to bury it in his backyard, someone found out and she appeared on his doorstep the next day and gave him a black eye. Then when it healed, she gave him another one.

Brian watches as White moves his hands up his neck, across the span of his chest like he can feel his lungs, down his stomach – as if he can create the feel of another's touch. Brian feels a bit disgusted with himself, as if he is watching something he shouldn't. He wonders what time it is. With the light outside, he can't really tell; the atmosphere is a little messed up where they are.

[=]

"Touching is good too," Black says, eyes looking somewhere else. "When it happens, suddenly you can't forget it and you pine for more but more will never be enough." He smiles at this. More will never be enough. That is a motto he loves to live by.

Wensleydale has regretfully found this out the hard way, as he cannot forgot the time the Them were sitting on Adam's front porch, eating popsicles when they were fourteen, when Brian cracks a joke and slaps his knee and misses and his hand lands on Wensley's instead. The feeling as if the popsicle had suddenly entered his bloodstream was unlike any other he had felt, and even when Brian removed his hand, a part of him wishes he kept it there.

Black adjusts his tie and he is thinking and thinking that maybe not seeing his fellows for a while is a problem that he should fix, maybe sooner rather than later…

[=]

Brian is thinking something is wrong that White has been still and silent for such a long period of time. Usually these sort of periods of inactivity foreshadow bad things. "Um," he says, but before he can get anything else out, White lets out a sound, sort of like a gurgle of a brook, and suddenly he is traveling through air; it's a funny feeling, like entering something thick and steamy. Flashes of color burst before his eyes and before he can identify what is what, his feet hit the floor in front of a pair of wooden doors. White unceremoniously bursts and invites himself in.

Brian recognizes Famine (some things don't change) and blinks when he sees Wensley sitting in front of him, looking just as surprised as the businessman himself. "Get out," White orders, although it comes out pleasantly to Wensley. "This reunion is private." Both Brian and Wensley are dumped out of the room and before the doors can close, Brian sees the young man in white practically slide across the table and onto Black's lap before he cannot see them anymore.

"So," Wensley says, his face pink; Brian doesn't like pink, but that shade is okay.

"What were you doing?"

Wensley pinks even more, if that is possible. "Just a chat, that's it." He gives Brian a strange look. "What were _you_ doing?"

Brian shrugs noncommittally. "Just a chat."

End

[=]

[1] He was, in fact. He would later realize he did not fill out his clothes as he had previously discovered.

[2] He can, however, tell you that in the process of exploring this empty power plant, he lost an empty packet of crisps, but that is nothing new.

[3] Usually, Brian's voices range between two emotions: excitement and irritation, but in a friendly sense.

[4] Though some may beg to differ, as Pepper has wanted to ask why Brian has been studying Wensley when his fly is not open, but Adam usually stops her before she interferes.

[5] Which, in turn, makes him think of Brian because Brian is always stuffing his face with _something_.

Note: Ho hum, first time penning a Good Omens fic! Couldn't get this concept out of my head…it seems that these pairings are sort of foils of each other, and I can't grasp why Brian/Wensley isn't as prevalent as Famine/Pollution. Hmm. Thanks for reading!


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